A conceptual review of family resilience factors

Family resilience is the successful coping of family members under adversity that enables them to flourish with warmth, support, and cohesion. An increasingly important realm of family nursing practice is to identify, enhance, and promote family resiliency. Based on a review of family research and conceptual literature, prominent factors of resilient families include: positive outlook, spirituality, family member accord, flexibility, family communication, financial management, family time, shared recreation, routines and rituals, and support networks. A family resilience orientation, based on the conviction that all families have inherent strengths and the potential for growth, provides the family nurse with an opportunity to facilitate family protective and recovery factors and to secure extrafamilial resources to help foster resilience.     

A systematic review of instruments measuring patients′ perceptions of patient‐centred nursing care

This systematic review identified and evaluated instruments measuring patients' perceptions of patient‐centred nursing care. Of 2629 studies reviewed, 12 were eligible for inclusion. Four instruments were reported: The Individualized Care Scale, the Client‐Centred Care Questionnaire, the Oncology patients' Perceptions of the Quality of Nursing Care Scale and the Smoliner scale. These instruments cover themes addressing patient participation and the clinician–patient relationship. Instruments were shown to have satisfactory psychometric properties, although not all were adequately assessed. More research is needed regarding test–retest reliability, convergent and discriminant validity, validity with known groups and structural validity using confirmatory factor analysis.     

Analysis of instruments measuring nurses' attitudes towards research utilization: a systematic review

AIM: This paper is a report of a systematic review describing instruments used to measure nurses' attitudes towards research utilization. BACKGROUND: Researchers need to have the tools to measure nurses' attitudes. However, limited literature critically analyses instruments and the concepts that comprise nurses' attitudes towards research utilization. DATA SOURCES: A search of the literature from 1982 to 2007 was performed using the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Health and Psychosocial Instruments, PubMed and MEDLINE data bases. The search terms were nursing research, research utilization, instruments, and nurses' attitudes. A total of 186 sources were identified, of which 25 were reviewed. METHODS: Fourteen instruments met the criteria for in-depth critical analysis of psychometric properties and concepts, and were included in the final review. Each instrument item was judged to be relevant to direct, indirect, persuasive and overall research utilization as defined by Estabrooks. Instruments were arranged from the strongest to the weakest reliability of the subscales to determine the instrument with the strongest psychometric properties. RESULTS: Indirect and overall research utilization was measured by all of the instruments. Ten instruments measured direct research utilization and nine instruments measured persuasive research utilization. The Research Utilization in Nursing Survey by Estabrooks, as adapted by Kenny, was an instrument with strong psychometric properties measuring all four concepts of nurses' attitudes towards using and participating in research and was clinically feasible. CONCLUSION: Many published instruments are available for use by nurse researchers to measure nurses' attitude towards research utilization, but only one has been subjected to rigorous testing: the Research Utilization in Nursing Survey by Estabrooks.     

国内外护理人文关怀测评工具的分析及思考

<正>护理人文关怀具有多重本质,可被视为一种态度、能力、属性和特征,或是一系列相互关联的复杂行为[1]。如何准确地测评护理人员人文关怀的品质,是护理界关心的一个问题,不少学者研制了相应的测评工具,在挖掘护理人文关怀本质的同时,也为测评提供了依据。为此,本研究对护理人文关怀测评工具进行综述,探讨不同测评工具的优劣,为研发更科学的测评工具提供参考。     

A systematic review of healthcare professionals' core competency instruments

While technical and profession‐specific competencies are paramount in the delivery of healthcare services, the cross‐cutting core competencies of healthcare professionals play an important role in healthcare transformation, innovation, and the integration of roles. This systematic review describes the characteristics and psychometric properties of existing instruments for assessing healthcare professionals' core competencies in clinical settings. It was guided by the JBI methodology and used the COSMIN checklist (Mokkink et al., User manual, 2018, 78, 1) to evaluate the methodological quality of the included studies. A database search (CINAHL, Scopus, and PubMed) and additional manual search were undertaken for peer‐reviewed papers with abstracts, published in English between 2008 and 2019. The search identified nine studies that were included in the synthesis demonstrating core competencies in professionalism, ethical and legal issues, research and evidence‐based practice, personal and professional development, teamwork and collaboration, leadership and management, and patient‐centered care. Few instruments addressed competencies in quality improvement, safety, communication, or health information technology. The findings demonstrate the reviewed tools' validity and reliability and pave the way for a comprehensive evaluation and assessment of core competencies into clinical practice.     

A review of organizational culture instruments for nurse executives

Nurse executives are aware of the complexities of organizational culture. It impacts the nursing work environment and patient care safety and quality. The authors describe several widely available tools that nurse leaders can use to assess organizational culture in the work environment. The psychometric and conceptual strengths and weaknesses of the measures are described and recommendations for use in nursing and patient care administration are provided.     

护理专业情境模拟教学质量评价工具的研究进展

高质量的情境模拟教学是教学效果的重要保障,因此,有必要对情境模拟教学进行评价,使得以情境模拟为教学策略的护理教育取得成功。该文综述了针对护理专业中情境模拟教学过程(包括案例设计、案例运行、引导性反馈)的常用的质量评价工具,为提升情境模拟教学质量提供参考工具。     

A review of instruments to measure interprofessional team-based primary care

Interprofessional team-based care is increasingly regarded as an important feature of delivery systems redesigned to provide more efficient and higher quality care, including primary care. Measurement of the functioning of such teams might enable improvement of team effectiveness and could facilitate research on team-based primary care. Our aims were to develop a conceptual framework of high-functioning primary care teams to identify and review instruments that measure the constructs identified in the framework, and to create a searchable, web-based atlas of such instruments (available at: http://primarycaremeasures.ahrq.gov/team-based-care/). Our conceptual framework was developed from existing frameworks, the teamwork literature, and expert input. The framework is based on an Input-Mediator-Output model and includes 12 constructs to which we mapped both instruments as a whole, and individual instrument items. Instruments were also reviewed for relevance to measuring team-based care, and characterized. Instruments were identified from peer-reviewed and grey literature, measure databases, and expert input. From nearly 200 instruments initially identified, we found 48 to be relevant to measuring team-based primary care. The majority of instruments were surveys (n = 44), and the remainder (n = 4) were observational checklists. Most instruments had been developed/tested in healthcare settings (n = 30) and addressed multiple constructs, most commonly communication (n = 42), heedful interrelating (n = 42), respectful interactions (n = 40), and shared explicit goals (n = 37). The majority of instruments had some reliability testing (n = 39) and over half included validity testing (n = 29). Currently available instruments offer promise to researchers and practitioners to assess teams’ performance, but additional work is needed to adapt these instruments for primary care settings.     

Pain outcomes: A brief review of instruments and techniques

Pain is a difficult outcome to measure due to its multifaceted and subjective nature. The need for selecting proper outcome measures is high because of the increasing demand for scientifically valid demonstrations of treatment efficacy. This article discusses some basic topics in the measurement of pain outcomes and addresses issues such as statistical versus clinical significance, daily home data collection, appropriate length of outcome measurement packets, and the possibility of objective pain measurements. This article also reviews some of the more commonly used tools for measuring pain and pain-related disability. By selecting the proper tools and employing them correctly, we can obtain highly reliable and valid measures of pain outcomes in research and clinical care.     

Examination of four different instruments for measuring blood lactate concentration

Information on the performance of different instruments used to measure blood lactate concentration is incomplete. We therefore examined instruments from Yellow Springs Instruments (YSI 23L and YSI 1500) and three cheaper and simpler instruments: Dr. Lange's LP8+, Lactate Pro from Arkray in the KDK corporation and Accusport from Boehringer Mannheim. First, a number of blood samples were analysed by standard enzymatic photofluorometry (our reference method) and, in addition, by one or more of the instruments mentioned above. Second, measurements using two or more identical instruments were compared. Third, since Lactate Pro and Accusport are small (approximately 100 g, pocket-size), battery-driven, instruments that could be used for outdoor testing, the performance of these instruments was examined at simulated altitudes (O2 pressure of <10 kPa) and at temperatures below -20 degrees C, while screening the instruments as much as possible from the cold. Most of the different instruments showed systematically too high or too low values (10-25% deviation). The observed differences between instruments may affect the "blood lactate threshold" by 2-5%. We found different readings between "equal" YSI 1500 instruments, while we could see no difference when comparing the other instruments of the same type. Lactate Pro gave reliable results at both -21+/-1 degrees C and at simulated altitude. Accusport gave reliable results in the cold, but 1.85+/-0.08 mmol L(-1) (mean+/-SD) too high readings at the simulated altitude. Of the three simpler instruments examined, the Lactate Pro was at least as good as the YSI instruments and superior to the other two.     

Examination of four different instruments for measuring blood lactate concentration

Low serum haptoglobin values are often found in children. Nine different parameters were studied in 125 healthy children aged 9–10 years to get indirect information on erythrocyte turnover and its possible relation to the low mean plasma haptoglobin level in childhood.

The mean LD activity was higher than in adults. The mean carboxyhaemoglobin per cent saturation (COHb %) and the mean serum haptoglobin concentrations were lower than in adults. No significant correlation was found between serum haptoglobin and serum iron, serum bilirubin and COHb %. Significant correlation at low r-values was found between serum iron, serum bilirubin and COHb %. The low serum haptoglobin levels often seen in children seemed not to be caused by an increase in erythrocyte turnover.     

A historical review of flow cytometers and characteristics of commercial instruments]

Instruments utilized in flow cytometry are called flow cytometers and they can be classified into two kinds, namely, cell analyzers and cell sorters. Important technological developments related to the flow cytometer and various kinds of laboratory instruments are reviewed historically. Commercial cell sorters and cell analyzers produced by several companies are compared and the characteristics of each are listed.     

Allowable systematic difference between two instruments measuring the same analyte

Abstract

Background. If a laboratory has two analytical instruments for measuring the concentration of the same analyte and samples from the patients are randomly allocated to either of the two, then an allowable systematic difference between the two instruments should be defined. We present a solution to this problem, based on the traditional criterion that the total analytical standard deviation (SD) shall be less than half the within-subject biological SD. Methods. We derived a formula for estimating the SD of the distribution of analytical results that may stem from two instruments with different means and SDs and different probabilities of being used. The formula was used to estimate the allowable systematic difference between the two instruments. Results. The allowable systematic difference depends on the within-subject biological SD, the SDs of the two instruments, and the probability that a sample is analyzed with a certain instrument. When this probability is 0.5, the allowable systematic difference approaches the magnitude of the within-subject biological SD as the analytical SDs approach zero, while no systematic difference is allowed when the two analytical SDs are equal to their maximum allowable value of half the within-subject biological SD. Conclusions. In a monitoring situation, the allowable systematic difference between two analytical instruments depends on the probability that a sample is allocated to each of the instruments as well as the analytical SDs and the within-subject biological SD.